Create urgency for registration

Effective marketers create urgency to help close a sale. They wield tools such as “limited supply” offers or time-sensitive incentives like end-of-year discounts, monthly specials, daily deals, or holiday-only promotions.

This urgency, whether real or manufactured, typically works. The idea is not to pressure the buyer into purchasing, but to encourage them to do so now if they’re already inclined toward your offering. Urgency is also a key component of getting people to sign up for a class or other event you’re coordinating. Among other things, it helps you better prepare for the day(s) of the event.

The most basic tools—including some that go back to days of yore when registration was handled via paper and papyrus—can create urgency for prospective registrants. They bear repeating because they work.

Early bird
The classic. Any enterprise-level registration management system should give you functionality to automatically apply early (or late) registration fees based on a specified date. In some of the better systems, you can apply multiple dates, such as $50 off before the 1st, $25 off before the 15th…

Promotional codes
Add discount/promotional codes that have expiration dates (such as two weeks) before the event and/or are limited to a certain number of persons—first-come, first-served—to take advantage of the codes. Share the codes as part of an invitation or other promotional materials and monitor how fast the codes are used. Adjust offers for future events based on what the data tells you.

Countdown
Even if you don’t charge for your programs, you can still create urgency because most events have a limited supply of seats. Just like hotels and airlines show how many rooms or tickets are left, you can do the same with spaces available for your programs. A basic widget you’ll find in some registration systems counts down and displays the number of spaces remaining for potential registrants.

Invitation reminders
If you send out invitation emails, check later to see who has yet to respond. Craft a slightly different invitation to send again. Include information to create urgency, such as how many spaces remain.

To share other suggestions on how to create urgency for class registration, or to learn more about GoSignMeUp or Learning Stream and its functions that help create urgency, get in touch with us here.